UV Mapping is - in my experience - one of the harder parts of modelling to get right early on. Fundamentally it's creating "seams" by selecting edges, unwrapping the model into a flat surface (like reverse origami), exporting that to a 2D graphics program to create the texture, then reimporting & applying the image to the model. When people talk about reskinning a model basically they're changing the UV mapped texture for the same model. What makes UV mapping difficult is knowing where to make the seams without distorting the map to the point of making the texture impossible to draw/paint correctly.
Other people in the pipeline did most of the mapping / texturing but I had to do enough to understand the basics. Not sure what tutorials you've already looked at. This text one is for an earlier version of Blender but will give you the
basic vocabulary. This is the
official documentation / uv mapping tutorial for the latest version. Blender Cookie is a tutorial site the boss recommended: their
intro to UV Mapping video tutorial. This
shorter one on youtube looks like it might be a decent intro - especially since it shows the process using a simple cube.
I prefer a book on the desk/lap to clicking back & forth between multiple windows for referring to tutorials while trying to create something. Not sure how easy any of these are to get outside the USA but they are the ones I use the most.
Blender For Dummies is surprisingly good - often use it for a quick reminder of how to do something I haven't done in a while.
Beginning Blender by Lance Flavell is also decent. Both those books are about earlier versions of Blender. Anything by Tony Mullen is very thorough. Use his
Mastering Blender when I want to sit down & learn something new. I plan on getting the latest editionwhen I get back into some practical modelling.
Beyond that it's down to what you can find by asking questions here or on the various Blender forums.
